Someone to Understand
by MyAlias
Summary: Sydney deals with her mother's betrayal. I appreciate reviews if you have any comments!


Disclaimer: I do not own anything about Alias or any of the characters written about here. They all belong to JJ Abrams and Bad Robot and ABC etc.  
  
Thanks to Jessica for helping!!!!!!  
  
Someone to Understand  
  
Sydney sat at her desk and waited for Vaughn to come rescue her. As soon as he arrived, she thought, he would come and save her from her thoughts, from her mind, from the pain that she couldn't stop feeling. She needed someone who understood to come and save her.  
  
It probably hadn't even been 20 minutes since she had heard the news, but she felt like she had been sitting there for hours. She thought was going to be physically ill, her stomach was tied in knots.   
  
She would not let herself cry. She would not cry over her mother again.   
  
**********   
  
Moments earlier she had been sitting in the conference room with Kendall. His forehead had been bright red, he looked as if a heart-attack was imminent.   
  
"Agent Bristow, there's no easy way for me to say this," he said in his typical fast-paced, no-nonsense tone of voice. "You're mother has..."  
  
"Is she dead?" Sydney asked softly, afraid for the answer. Sydney prepared herself for the news she was expecting. 'Your mother warned you about this mission,' she thought. Why, after all she had been through, did she have to lose her mother again?   
  
"I wish," Kendall said, bitterly. Sydney looked up, shocked. "She's escaped." He paused. "To the open arms of Arvin Sloane."   
  
*********   
  
Sydney watched the others working around her. She watched the high-ranking agents hurriedly working at their computers, talking on the phone at the speed-of-light, preparing briefings to try and explain how she got away.   
  
She watched some of the other agents whose services were not needed standing in small groups, sipping coffee and quietly asking how he could have let her escape. How could he have been so stupid? If they only knew Irina Derevko.   
  
She watched the new recruits copy papers and fetch cups of coffee. If only she could be one of them. So often it seemed to her that ignorance would be better than dealing with the truth. Wouldn't it be easier if her mother was still a school teacher, long dead?   
  
Sydney just sat at her desk, watching. Some of them had heard the news, some of them hadn't yet, some of them never would. She wished she could be any of them. None of them would ever have to experience the feelings she had felt too many times.   
  
*******  
  
Vaughn finally walked in to the office. Kendall hadn't been planning on paging him. Sydney had been notified immediately for the obvious reasons, but Vaughn, Kendall thought, didn't need to know right away.   
  
"You will page him," Sydney had demanded. "Or I will."  
  
"Agent Bristow, when did it become your job to decide who finds out about this?"  
  
"Agent Vaughn has been involved with Irina's case since the beginning. He has a right to know," Sydney continued.   
  
"He is under investigation."  
  
"He shouldn't be and you know that," she snapped back at him.   
  
"I'm not inclined to trust the judgment of Bristows today," he spat, the veins on his head becoming even more noticeable.  
  
After a short silence Sydney said it. "I asked him about it," she confessed. "He's been investigating my mother for six months. He has the intel to prove it. He's been spending his own money to do what the CIA won't and..."  
  
"Agent Bristow, the ramifications of...You..."  
  
"I what, signed a confidentiality agreement? I also put my trust in someone and I wasn't going to sit around and let the CIA tell me if it was misplaced. So tattle on me, Kendall. Page Agent Vaughn first."  
  
Kendall rubbed his forehead as if squeezing it hard enough between his thumb and his index finger would make the situation disappear. Sydney left, but she knew by the defeated look on Kendall's face that Vaughn would soon be on his way.   
  
***********   
  
Vaughn swiftly walked towards the conference room, his jaw was clenched tightly. He must already know what had happened, Sydney thought. He made eye contact with Sydney, but said nothing.  
  
Sydney had to wonder if he was mad at her. Although it hurt to think about, anything was better than the urge to cry that came when she thought about what everyone else was thinking about - Irina.  
  
Was he upset because she had followed him, because she had questioned him? Did he really believe she had doubted him?   
  
All she knew was that she couldn't let her mother take him away from her, too.  
  
********  
  
Another hour went by, or maybe just a few minutes. She really couldn't tell anymore. She listened to the conversations of the people around her, tapping her fingernails on her desk in a constant rhythm. She heard "Agent Bristow" in every conversation. Maybe she was being paranoid. Then again, she reminded herself, her father was Agent Bristow, too. Everyone would be talking about him.   
  
Sydney had to wonder how was he going to be when he returned? How would he react to being betrayed by her again?   
  
She couldn't blame him. He fell into the same trap that she had, it just took him longer. Sydney had been sucked in so easily.  
  
The hug she and her mother had shared outside. Her mother's words right before the mission. Every scrap of emotion she had tentatively felt for her mother over the past few months.  
  
It made her sick to think about them.  
  
She would never think of her as "mom" again. Calling her Irina made it less personal - it made her just another bad guy. "Mom" may not necessarily mean warm, homemade cookies and constant support, but it suggests at least a little bit of love exists. Sure, her mother had said the words - I love you. But how could she have meant it when she had been planning the ultimate betrayal all along?  
  
She continued tapping her fingernails. She bit down on her lip. She was not going to cry. All she needed was a hug - to know that someone understood. All she was getting were the stares of other agents who would never begin to comprehend the way she felt.   
  
And Vaughn. She didn't even know where he was, much less if he was willing to be that person for her.  
  
**********  
  
It wasn't long before Kendall and some other high-ranking officers, including a few via satellite from headquarters, called her in to a conference room to ask her all sorts of questions to which she didn't know the answer.   
  
How could she? She didn't know her mother. Talking to someone through a window for a few minutes once in a while doesn't mean you know them.  
  
They proposed all sorts of impossible theories about Irina's plans.  
  
The worst part for Sydney was that nothing was impossible anymore.  
  
When they suggested a theory she would say, "Like I've already said, I don't have any knowledge of that, but anything is possible."  
  
There was one exception. "Agent Bristow, is it possible your father intentionally aided her escape?"  
  
"No."  
  
************  
  
She left the conference room more than a little upset. She felt like a criminal for being the daughter of one, like she was the one being investigated, like she was hiding something.  
  
She held her head up as she walked to the restroom and tried to ignore the people staring at her as she walked by. She could see it in their faces, though.   
  
"Is this the last straw for Sydney Bristow?" they all asked, silently.  
  
"Poor Sydney."  
  
"When is she going to start crying?"  
  
Sydney was not going to cry. She went to the restroom and splashed cold water on her face. One time. Two times. Three times, until the urge to throw up had somewhat passed. She used a paper towel to dry off. She leaned against the mirror and shut her eyes.  
  
Breathe in, breathe out, she told herself. Don't let it get to you.   
  
A woman walked in. She saw Sydney and stopped dead in her tracks before abruptly leaving.  
  
Sydney took another deep breath and slowly slid down the wall until she was sitting on the cold tile, her hands pushed against her eyes, seemingly holding back the tears she wouldn't let herself cry.   
  
No one understood.   
  
***************   
  
She stood up and left the seclusion of the restroom. She glanced at her watch. It was late - 11:00. How did it get to be 11:00? How long had she been sitting at her desk, numbly tapping her fingernails? How long had she been interrogated? How long had she been concentrating on breathing while sitting on the bathroom floor, trying not to cry?  
  
The worst part was, she hadn't done anything to help except answer questions, and she didn't even have any information that was valuable. She hadn't been productive and she hadn't helped. She had only been there at all because if she went home she would cry. And she was not going to cry.  
  
She saw Vaughn at his desk, busily working on his computer. He hadn't come to talk to her. He hadn't said anything to her since he arrived.  
  
She stared at him, hoping to make eye contact, to silently beg him to believe her and forgive her and to hold her.  
  
It wasn't until Kendall began to speak to her that she realized how strange she must look. Sydney Bristow, standing in the middle of the Operations Center, staring blankly into space.  
  
"Agent Bristow," he said in the softest tone Sydney had ever heard him use. "You should go home. There will be hours of briefings tomorrow and..."  
  
"Yeah." Sydney shook her head to bring her back to the real world. "I was just leaving," she said as she began to walk towards her desk to grab her bag.  
  
She picked up her belongings and slowly put all of the papers that were stacked in a neat, untouched pile into her bag. She wouldn't sleep tonight - maybe she could work. It was after she had packed up and was about to leave when she noticed it.  
  
An envelope. She opened it slowly and found a silver key inside. She had tried to make herself forget about that key. It had seemed to her that is was a symbol of how close she had been to betraying Vaughn.  
  
Now it seemed that it was his way of letting her know that nothing had changed.  
She closed her eyes and allowed the corners of her lips to turn up, even it was just a little but. It felt as if it had been years since she felt the slightest sensation of happiness.  
  
This time when she looked at Vaughn, he was looking back. He had watched her open to envelope.  
  
Before she knew it, she had hurried over to him and collapsed in his arms.   
There was no point in trying anymore, she thought to herself. She had found what she had been waiting for, someone that could begin to understand. She started to cry.  
  
They stood there for a little while like that. She cried and cried and he hugged her and whispered that it was going to be ok.  
  
Then they left. Together. 


End file.
